Lying
by MessyJess
Summary: It's hard to lie to yourself, but it provides ample entertainment for anyone who can read your mind. A developing story that explores the thought processes of our favorite crime-fighting duo. Rate M for language and later chapters.
1. Lying

Hello all. I'm back. I've been inspired as of late and have decided to ignore the papers that need grading in favor of writing what I hope will become an interesting piece. Updates might be a little slow on this one, but don't worry, I'll get you to the end of it all. I hope you enjoy. There's nothing M-rated in this chapter aside from the occasional curse word, but, you know me, there'll be some sweaty sexy stuff eventually.

LYING

What is lying, really? Is it saying things that flat out aren't true, shading the truth for your personal gain, or just not saying anything at all and letting the truth fester in the back of your mind? Because, you know, allowing the truth to fester, probably not as big a deal as, like, saying you didn't kill someone when you did. Of course, if you _did_ kill someone and then didn't say anything about it, it's still comes off as lying. Okay, that's a bad example. Killing is the major sin in that scenario, not lying. But that's good, because on the scale of sins, lying at least ranks below murder. It probably ranks below stealing and adultery too. So how bad could it be, really?

But he wasn't lying. Not really. He was _withholding_. There's a difference. It isn't lying if you just don't see the point in sharing certain things with the whole wide world, or even any one person. He wasn't hurting anyone. In fact, his withholding was probably preserving the balance and calm necessary for any partnership. He was _helping_. Helping has never been wrong. Everyone should be helpful. It's like God's will that he not tell anyone about this….ever.

God's will. Plus, his thoughts were _his_ _thoughts_. And even if he did decide to share those thoughts, he was pretty sure no one would be interested. Everyone else had probably noticed that her hair smells like apples. Any idiot could see that her cheekbones are really high and they make her look like a sculpture made of warm white marble. And he was pretty sure, last week, he had overheard Angela mention that her butt looked fucking fantastic in those dark blue jeans. So, obviously, he would just be saying redundant things. No one likes redundancy. Redundancy is boring, and Seeley Booth is _not_ boring.

Seeley Booth, is, however, totally in love with his partner. But she didn't need to know that. It was normal for people to keep these things to themselves. They made movies about that. The guy loves the girl, but doesn't say anything…granted, in the end the guy always says something and then there's kissing and whatnot. But the end is always the lamest part of those movies. It's always the same: crowded street or ballroom, the confession in the middle of everything, the kiss, and then the sudden confession or reciprocation from the other party. None of those movies ever once had the leading lady lecture the guy on the merits of honesty and then refuse to engage in public displays of affection in a working environment.

Which just goes to show that he was in love with a weirdo. It would behoove him to become _not_ in love with said weirdo. She would take a confession of love and admiration as a sign of dishonesty in the relationship. And if he just tried to mack on her, well, she'd probably go all kung fu on him. Therefore, silence is golden. He'd get over it eventually. This wasn't high school. He wasn't so lost in his emotions that he would forever be in love with her. This wasn't an 'until death' thing. He'd deal. Of course the whole "seeing her every day" thing, the "really attractive woman" thing, and the "she's my best friend" thing might mean that the process would take a little longer than he would like, but, hey, he was a man. He'd had to wait on a black tar rooftop in hundred and four degree weather for over nine hours looking through the scope of a rifle, he could wait for this to pass. He hoped.

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It was important to be confident. Confidence was a key ingredient in a well-balanced and positive life. Use the gifts and assets that you have to make an impression on people. Discover what you love to do and do it with verve and expertise. She was good with bones. No, she was _great_ with bones. She was with bones the way some are with soccer balls, lesson plans, books, or accounting ledgers. She handled them with clarity, finesse, and grace.

It was everything else in her life that she handled like a crack addicted clown on a unicycle. Namely, handling all the people in her life. The problem she had with people is that they had flesh. Flesh screwed up her whole process. Flesh lied. Flesh was a bastard coated bastard with bastard filling. Flesh covered up the honest white calcium. Flesh covered up the core. If everyone was just a walking skeleton, life would be easy breezy. As it was, life was sort of treacherous and bizarre and full of lying liars.

She had never grouped herself among the lying liars until recently. Recently, she had discovered that her flesh was now forcing her to be less than honest. She could hide things from the world. Physiological responses were tucked away in the chest cavity and the more private regions of her body between her _fleshy_ thighs. She figured that the meatier the region of the body, the more secrets it held.

The thighs for example were quite meaty on most people. _And what were thighs hiding?_ Ah yes, that would be the reproductive organs. On women, the breasts were another rather fleshy area. _And what was beyond all that breast tissue?_ Oh right, the beating heart. Men generally gained weight around their middle, and what was that old saying, "The way to a man's heart is through his stomach." Ha! Proof! Flesh was the devil. Created by Lucifer himself to shield the world from our own private sins and desires. Granted, she didn't believe in the devil, but she was giving serious thought to the concept of "sins of the flesh".

Her flesh was very sinful. It was cloaking an entire chemical reaction to her partner. It was practically _giving her permission_ to lie. If no one could see her pulse kick up, then why should she say anything? If the flip-flops her stomach did were invisible to the naked eye, then why should she say anything? If certain neurons in her brain were firing really dirty thoughts back and forth like some sort of electrical hullabaloo unbeknownst to the man sitting next to her, then why should she say anything? If certain regions of her body became slightly damp while having those thoughts, then why should she say anything?

What she really needed, was a date. She needed to 'get laid'. She needed to be with a man that wasn't Booth. She needed to focus on sleeping with someone that wasn't an integral part of her life. She tried to think back to the last sexual encounter. Oh God, had it been that long? _Think, Brennan, think._ Surely it hadn't been…eight months? She hadn't gone eight months without sex since she'd started _having_ sex. Oh, for Pete's sake. She really really needed a date, and sex, and conversation, but not with Booth. Right, so, a man, sex, conversation, but not any of those with Booth. Well, maybe the conversation. And there's no denying that Booth is a man. And what is sex really, but a biological urge that most people her age didn't even put a lot of stock in….

_No! Bad Brennan. No sex with Booth_. Her eyes drifted to the bones splayed on the table in front of her. This guy was about Booth's height. Damn it, stop thinking about Booth. Get a grip. She felt her phone vibrate in the pocket of her blue lab coat. She reached in and fished out the contraption. Oh, of course, it was Booth. This was going to be a really long day.


	2. Pictures

She has her own code of justice and morality

She has her own code of justice and morality. Fortunately, most of her personal laws coincide with the laws of the nation, the laws he is sworn to uphold. Most of the time they are in agreement of what is right and wrong, even if their reasoning tends to differ.

Every now and then, though, there is a case that breaks her heart. Her superior intellect and reasoning skills supercede justice and she is disappointed in the outcome doled out by society. She has an uncanny ability to love and forgive because she both thinks and feels outside the spectrum of the normal person. And when she is let down, she balks at the onslaught of emotion. She stands alone against the tide of remorse and regret and she cries at the unforgiving nature of humanity.

He wraps her in his arms and wishes there was a way to make her feel something else. He wonders how many times she's cried this way with no one to hold her. He squeezes her tightly in his arms and rubs a hand up and down her spine and hopes that he's helping. When her arms circle around his ribs he lets out a breath he didn't know he was holding. Her face is buried in his shoulder and he feels the damp spot on his collar where her tears have pooled. Her breath against his neck has begun to even out and her sniffing has ebbed.

She turns her head to the side so that her nose is pressed against his neck and takes a deep breath, calming herself and regaining her composure. He loosens his arms only slightly and tilts his head enough to look down at her.

"Okay, Bones?" She doesn't speak, but nods her head slightly and starts to pull away. He'd be lying if he said that didn't disappoint him, but he lets her go and she takes a small step away from his chest. Because he can't stand to let her go completely he keeps one hand on her shoulder. What would happen if he slid his hand to the nape of her neck and closed the gap between them again? Would her head tilt? Would their mouths fit together like they did under the mistletoe? Would her kiss be salty with tears? He shook his head against the rising of his libido and tried to remember that he was here for comfort, not fantasy.

He lets his hand drop from her shoulder and edges slightly out of arm's length to lessen the possibility of hormonal hyper-drive. She has wiped her face off and is looking at him with the slightly sheepish, slightly grateful, slightly annoyed look she always has after their hugs. The grateful part of her look is for him, the annoyed part is for her, and the sheepish part is probably for them both.

She heads to her kitchen and asks if he'd like anything to drink. He replies and she is gone, burying her grief and awkwardness in a familiar task, and suddenly he is alone with his thoughts. He likes her apartment, so many old things resting amidst all the shiny and new. The clear sheen of her glass coffee table glowing underneath a rough, dark, old piece of pottery. He makes his way to her tallest bookcase and scans the titles, most of them complicated and boring. They dedicate hundreds of pages and thousands of words to the minutiae. They take something simple and finite and stretch it out into the complex and unending. At the end of a particularly boring shelf he sees a picture. It's her father, her brother, and herself, smiling at the camera with their arms around each other, and re remembers when it was taken, because he was the one who took it. He hadn't known she had it developed.

He looks around the room and realizes that there are several picture frames that he had never noticed before. A photo of Angela and Bones in their Halloween costumes. A framed photo of her parents on their wedding day. A group shot of the entire squint squad and Booth before Zack was taken away, but after Cam arrived. A shot of Russ's girls smiling in the sunshine. And there, tucked next to a row of travel books on her second smallest bookcase, on the top shelf, is a picture of them together. He wonders when it was taken and how she got hold of it. Neither one of them are aware of the camera, they are looking at each other. When he sees his face in the picture he feels a twinge of panic. No one who saw this picture could miss his affection for the woman he is looking at. Then, he looks at her, and realizes suddenly, that he isn't the only one who has been lying in their relationship.

"I love that picture." He hadn't heard her come back in the room and he straightens and turns at the sound of her voice. He swallows a lump in his throat and tries his best for a nonchalant smile, "When was this taken?" He points at the picture and she moves forward. She passes him a glass of water as she leans forward to examine the photo more closely.

"You know, I'm not sure, but Angela took it. Judging by my hair, I'd say sometime last year. Angela just gave it to me along with the Halloween picture and the group shot of everyone in the lab." She turned to look up at him again, "We look happy in it. It's one of my favorites."

He nods in agreement, and decides to push, "We look happy with each other." He doesn't stop looking at her as he says it, and he notices the slow creep of color fanning across her face. She nods and keeps staring right back at him, and he realizes that he can feel color flooding his own face.

This is it, this is the moment. The moment of truth when he can fall into the honest heat he feels and risk it all, or retreat back into the cool lie that he has created over the millions of moments he's spent in private longing. He can feel his toes wiggling in his shoes, begging the rest of his body to move with them. He takes a step toward her, and she shifts toward him, not really taking a step, but not staying still, and certainly not moving away. A good sign.

His arms reach out and she moves into them and then their mouths meet. Her hands fold into his shirt and cling to him, pulling him closer. His arms are wrapped around her and he feels everything inside of him tilt toward her and he pulls her tightly against him, holding on to keep from falling all over her. Their tongues twist together and he feels the tumbling sensation before he realizes they're both sinking to the floor.

They were slipping to the floor in time with slipping inside each other's mouths. On his knees, his torso pressed against hers, he recalls praying. How many times had he hoped for this in his prayers? She is a moving thing in his arms. Her ribs expand and contract quickly, he can feel her heartbeat pounding against his own chest, and her arms reach around his neck, drift down his chest, and then reach back around him again.

She pulls his collar and he follows her down completely to the floor. It strikes him that this is going to happen; she's not going to pull back, because pulling back is completely against her nature. He pulls his head away from hers to look at her as he hovers atop of her. Her lips are pink and swollen, her cheeks are flushed, her eyes a slightly hooded, but shining at him. She looks beautiful, her hair is sprawled across the hardwood floor, and his sense of chivalry kicks him in the gut at about the same time her hands begin to pull him back down to her lips.

"You know, Bones, there's a perfectly good bed just a few feet from here." He feels lightheaded and wonders if he'd be able to make it that far without falling over.

"No. Here. Now." Her words are smashed against his mouth, but he can feel her meaning with its full ferocity as she kisses him with renewed vigor. He'd never been more pleased with a woman refusing to go to bed with him.

"Okay, then." His hands drifted up her sides and began fumbling with the buttons of her blouse. Her hands have mysteriously managed to unbuckle, unsnap, and unzip his trousers. Her feet drift up the back of his legs and hook the waist of his pants, working them down his legs. He takes a moment to be impressed with her dexterity and efficiency, but her mouth moves to his collarbone and his mind blanks against the sudden surge in his veins.

He begins to kiss his way down her open blouse to the waistband of her jeans. Lacking the yoga-trained leg muscles of his partner, he removes them by hand. After he deposits the pants over his shoulder he puts one hand on each of her endlessly long legs and trails them slowly up, up, up, to the center of her. She has shucked off her shirt and lays in front of him in nothing but a white bra and black panties. The symbolism abounds.

She leans up and grabs the hem of his orange t-shirt and lifts it up and over his head, tossing it aside as she lays back down. Their underwear has become their only-wear. They just look at each other for several moments and then their eyes meet and their mouths twist into matching crooked grins. He leans back down to her and they rub along the living room floor until their undergarments are dislodged and lost amidst the furniture.

Their naked bodies writhe along one another. He tugs a tightened nipple into his mouth and she moans underneath him, grasping his hair and calling his name. He likes the way she says his name. He likes everything she does. She arches and bends, gasps and releases her breaths in a rush. She's like a beautiful instrument he can play. A touch here, a stroke there, and he can make her body play a tune of perfect sensation.

Her hand reaches between their bodies and grasps him firmly. She guides him to the warmest part of her, the warmest part of the world, and he strokes inside. They linger there for a moment, relishing the first moment. As he begins to move inside her their lips meet again and again. Their tongues thrust in time with their hips and they kiss until they cannot breathe. Gasping for air they part for moments and then, because he cannot help it he drops his lips back to her skin. He tastes her neck and shoulders and tangles his hands in her hair. The delicious tendrils twine around his fingers like so many strands of brown silk.

Her name spills from his lips amidst the panting breaths and he can feel her constrict around him. She bursts underneath him, bending like a bow, and he allows himself to let go, and everything is everything is everything.

He began to prepare himself for the end of the afterglow. In a few minutes there would be panic. He could almost guarantee guilt and confusion. But he also knew that, no matter what, this was something. This was something that was supposed to happen. Maybe not this way, maybe not this night, but the lying was done, and this was going to work. He would make it work. And as he tilted his head to look at her face he forgot the guilt, panic, and confusion. She stared back at him with her blue, blue eyes and she smiled. She was his partner, his Bones. And because he couldn't think of words that would be enough, he smiled back.


End file.
